Hundreds of students and protesters gathered around the Saint Louis University clock tower in October, and organizers demanded an end to "white supremacy."

Saint Louis University is having a bit of a statue problem.

The statue, a proposed monument to the Occupy SLU movement of students and protesters who camped out on the school's midtown campus for six days in October, has raised the self-righteous hackles of some of the Jesuit university's alumni. Some donors have threatened to cut off support. One alumna told theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch she closed her wallet because SLU president Fred Pestello chose to negotiate with the protesters, a sign that the St. Louis institution is becoming a "liberal environment."

Indeed, with all the hubbub over Pestello's handling of Occupy SLU and subsequent donor condemnation, you'd be forgiven for thinking the recent news coming out of SLU is, well, new. You would be wrong. A look back at the 1969 occupation of SLU's Ritter Hall reveals that negotiating with protesters has long been part of the university's heritage.

The Eads Bridge, as recorded in the equivalent of the 1875 version of Google Maps.

If you could take a hot air balloon in 1875 and drift through the squalid sky above St. Louis, you'd see a city bustling with breweries, horse-drawn carriages, trains skimming the riverfront and ferries chugging beneath the Eads Bridge.

Such was the view granted to a group of artists who took to the skies between 1874 and 1876 to furiously sketch St. Louis -- each home, building and street in the burgeoning metropolis. The result was a staggeringly detailed perspective map, arguably the most impressive ever made, titled Pictorial St. Louis: The Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley, a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective A.D. 1875.

The map has attracted a cult following among cartography buffs, and first editions can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. So it came as a bit of shock when Brandon Clark nabbed a largely intact original for less than $100 at an estate sale last May.

Joseph Galloy and a team of archaeologists are digging into Brooklyn, Illinois this week.

Brooklyn, Illinois has two things going for it: History and strip clubs. Even with a population of just 650, the village is arguably the Sin City of the Metro East.

Yet, just a few blocks away from the neon fleshpots on South 3rd Street, the other side of Brooklyn is coming to life. On the corner of Madison and South 6th streets, a team of state archaeologists are digging for evidence of the home owned by Priscilla "Mother" Baltimore, a former slave who founded the settlement in 1829. Not only did Baltimore become a well-known abolitionist who sheltered runaway slaves in the home that the archaeologists are searching for, the town she founded ended up becoming the first in the nation to be incorporated with a black-majority population.

"People still venerate her, they see her as the founding mother of the town," says Miranda Yancey-Bailey, a research archaeologist with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey.

Long before actor Steve McQueen famously hopped behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang in Bullitt or broke out of a POW camp in The Great Escape, the actor -- once dubbed the "King of Cool" -- was a rejected child, living on a hog farm in central Missouri.

St. Louis' late, great Allen Barkalge, demonstrating the art of not getting hijacked.

In case you missed the news over the weekend, Quebec is having a bit of a problem with hardcore criminals escaping prison by helicopter. On Saturday, a green-colored chopper landed in the courtyard of a detention center in suburban Quebec. It took off with three inmates, two of whom are facing murder charges.

The escape is Quebec's second daring helicopter prison break in two years. In March 2013, a helicopter pilot was forced at gunpoint to hover over a different prison while two inmates shimmied up rope ladders.

This got us thinking: Somebody has to tell Quebec about Allen Barklage.

A former Vietnam combat pilot, Barklage nearly died on May 24, 1978 while foiling a passengers' attempt to hijack his helicopter for a prison break in Marion, Illinois.

Remember the gay-history exhibit coming to the Missouri History Museum? The one that revealed the homophobic worst in St. Louis' online commenters?

Turns out, there's no need to wait for the history museum to catalog and archive before seeing Steven Brawley's collection of historical LGBT artifacts reaching back six decades. A sampling of the collection is on display at the phd gallery's exhibition, "A History of Queer: Selections from the St. Louis LGBT History Project," through February -- one final stop before officially becoming part of the museum's conservancy.

Larger than Central Park, our urban oasis sees more visitors each year than the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium combined. We totally understand why folks organizing St. Louis' 250th birthday party want to host it at Forest Park over Valentine's Day weekend.

What if -- just hang in there with us for a minute -- we held St. Louis' 250th anniversary in a place that wasn't wilderness when the city was founded? What if we chose a location closer to the heart of the city instead of a park founded 112 years later?

Missouri is on the verge of launching the first mainstream queer museum collection in the region, prompting some epic freak-outs from anti-LGBT commenters on Facebook.

The collection of gay St. Louis historical artifacts -- including drag-queen outfits, protest signs, pride-parade souvenirs and more from the last 60 years -- sits in Steven Brawley's basement for now, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Missouri History Museum is eyeing the piles of memorabilia, called the St. Louis LGBT History Project, for a queer history exhibit.